Il leave you with one more thought for the evening... Chapter 12 Maori and the criminal justice system in New Zealand Khylee Quince1 What do you call a Maori in a suit? The Defendant 12.1 Introduction Jokes like the one above probably represent the most common stereotype of a criminal offender in New Zealand, and unfortunately, like most clichés, it contains a grain of truth. Popular culture perpetuates this in films such as Once Were Warriors,2 where the character of Jake Heke (“Jake the Muss”) has become synonymous with a modern disenfranchised urban Maori — a heavily tattooed, hard-drinking, violent man. For many Maori, however, the image of Jake the Muss has other nuances — a man with no connection to whakapapa, whenua, or whanaungatanga — the aspects of tikanga Maori that provide a framework of social protection and moral guidance to actions. The fictional Jake is the end-product of nearly 200 years of dispossession and alienation as a result of the colonising process that undermined traditional Maori epistemologies and methods of dealing with harm within the community. How then did this process occur? What were the principles of tikanga Maori that were displaced? How does the contemporary criminal justice system deal with the Jakes in our communities? In this chapter we review the relationship between Maori and the criminal justice system of New Zealand. Statistical profiles of offending in New Zealand in modern times reflect a trend of serious habitual offending by Maori, vastly disproportionate to our current 15 per cent Te Roroa, Ngapuhi, Ngati Porou. Lecturer, University of Auckland School of Law. 2 1 Special thanks to Dr Nin Tomas for her comments and suggestions on the working drafts of this chapter. Once Were Warriors is an adaptation of Alan Duff’s novel of the same name: A Duff Once Were Warriors Auckland, Tandem, 1990. #Star
Posted on: Fri, 04 Oct 2013 11:56:57 +0000
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